Dr. Cara Gargano is Professor of Dance and Theatre the Department of Theatre, Dance and Arts Management at the Post Campus of Long Island University. She studied at the New York School of Ballet under Richard Thomas and Barbara Fallis, and later taught at the school. As an actor and dancer, she has performed with US Terpsichore Co, the Empire State Ballet, Garden State Ballet, Arlington Dance Theatre, the Upstate Repertory Theatre and the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre. Her concert choreography for Cara Gargano Dance Co. has received warm reviews from The New York Times and has been presented in Europe as well as in the United States. She has directed for the Bel Canto Opera, Delaware Valley Opera Company, the Upstate Repertory Theatre, and the Riverside Shakespeare Company, among others.

Dr. Gargano holds a Ph.D. in French language and literature from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and her thesis on Marie Laberge’s theatre garnered the prize for the best thesis in Québec Studies. She regularly presents papers at national and international conferences, has published in both French and English, provided chapters for several books, and has translated several plays from the French that have been produced in New York and Ohio, including a novel by Marie Laberge entitled July. A member of the Actors Equity Association, the Dance Studies Association, the Association Internationale de Théâtre Universitaire, the International Federation for Theater Research, and the Modern Language Association, she is twice Past President of the Congress on Research in Dance and has served as a choreography peer reviewer for the National Dance Association Promotion and Tenure Initiative. As President of the Congress on Research in Dance she organized two international conferences, in Taiwan and in Paris, France.